Vanishing
by ardavenport
Summary: Ben Kenobi covertly observes the Lars family and has his own revelation about the state of the galaxy.


**VANISHING**

by ardavenport

* * *

Ben Kenobi put his flask of water on the improvised gift table - a couple of worn planks laid over two tall blocks - with the other wedding offerings.

He did not actually know the couple, two older widows whose spouses had died prematurely and who wanted to form a new family. Most of the settlers showed up at social gatherings like these in Anchorhead just to socialize. Including the Owen Lars family.

A woman with a sun-dried face, short scraggly gray hair and wearing a coarse gray kaftan added her own wedding present. More water in a minimal plastoid bladder. Many of the gifts were water, with the containers being an added benefit around the more valuable liquid inside them, a simple, impersonal gift for a couple that already had two established households to combine into one. There were other practical gifts, handmade edibles and personal items, or cloth and spare parts common to nearly any vaporator in the area.

Kenobi tugged his robe closer to him and turned away from the modest pile. His eyes found Owen Lars, his wife Beru and their nephew by marriage, Luke Skywalker.

He was growing fast, almost twelve standard years since Kenobi had delivered the new-born orphan to be adopted by his grandmother's stepson and wife. The Lars family was dressed in clean, but worn clothes in the usual faded, dull pastels of the rest of the gathering. Only the marrying couple and a few members of the wedding party wore crisp new colors that still would have been considered desperately plain, even shabby, by the standards of the ruling Courasanti of the Old Republic.

Times had changed since the rise of the Empire.

The Empire extolled the virtues of simplicity, of law and order. In its early years the Empire vilified the excesses and corruption of the Republic that it replaced. Now, the Republic was un-mentioned, as if it had never existed, while the victors mercilessly un-did the good, the laws, the freedom that had once been. Everything that the Jedi had once upheld. Gone or vanishing.

Another boy ran up to Luke and with his guardians' nodded permission, they ran off together to join a group away from the adults. They shouted to each other in a clearing, the empty, dusty horizon of the desert visible between the buildings of anchorhead behind them. Lars' gaze scanned the crowd and Kenobi tugged his hood down and turned his shoulder toward him. Owen Lars had made it clear years ago that he wanted Kenobi nowhere near young Luke Skywalker.

Wanted by the Empire, he had no good arguments that would counter the moisture farmer's stubborn caution about how dangerous he was. Kenobi had no idea how high the bounty on Jedi was, now, it never seemed to be advertised anymore. As if like the Republic, Jedi had never existed.

He took a place in a bit of shade under the edge of an awning attached to the back of the junker's pale stone hut. The double suns cast long blue morning shadows, the desert heat rising. The air was still thick with the humidity that the moisture farmers around Anchorhead harvested. Rare florals mixed with the aromas from the improvised refreshment table next to the gifts. It was a horrible expense; someone must have procured the centerpiece plant from Mos Eisley. It would be dead in days; it was much too thirsty a plant for the farmers to keep alive, but cut up and dried, it would be an edible treat for the married couple later.

In the public field beyond the gathering, Kenobi covertly watched Luke play some type of game of tag-and-chase with the other youngsters. Folding his arms into the sleeves of his robe, he stilled his mind, closed his eyes. The sound of wind and lowly spoken conversation faded.

Luke was strong with the Force. The invisible glow of it radiated from within him. And when Kenobi meditated deeply, alone back in his hut, all the possibilities that flowed through Luke always led to Vader and his master, the Emperor. But neither Kenobi nor Master Yoda, exiled on faraway Dagobah, could see past that. The Dark Side clouded the Force throughout the galaxy. The star of a future beyond the Sith was visible through the blackness, but nothing more.

A trio started to set up a stand of sound and percussion equipment; they would provide the music for the ceremony, such as it was. Recorded music would have been better, but they always seemed to show up for outdoor public occasions whenever Kenobi came to covertly observe the Lars family. One of the 'musicians' was the daughter of the head of the Anchorhead council.

Beru hugged one of the brides while Owen stayed back as many of the men did while the most of the women socialized. The customs here assigned some people the chores of managing the family of isolated farms while others did the physical tasks of supporting them. Rarely did any individuals do both. Kenobi made sure his face was turned away whenever Owen's eyes strayed in his direction.

A couple more people added token gifts. A box that made sloshing noises, another water bladder and a faded bag that made tinkling metaling noises as it dropped. They cast covetous glances toward the refreshments and moved on, their boots softly shuffling in the sand toward the back of the gathering furthest away from the wedding party.

A disturbance broke out among the young people, two older teenagers rolled about, wrestling, flinging up pale dust clouds all around them. Some of the other young people egged on the fight, but Luke had backed away with a few others. The adults quickly broke it up and the miscreants were marched off. The children were called back to their respective families, including Luke, who seemed to want to tell his aunt and uncle all about the excitement. His uncle's command and gesture cut off the narrative. He sullenly followed them to where the people assembled for the ceremony.

Luke, like nearly every other youth in the settlement, dreamed of leaving the dreary desert life of a moisture farmer on Tatooine where a minor fistfight might be the most significant event to break up the monotony of mending and brushing sand out water vaporator components for as long as a whole season. But his desperation for a different life was remarkably different from his father's. Anakin's desire to leave Tatooine burned from a passion to be free from his enslavement to the Hutts. And excitement had never been enough for Anakin; he always had to be the fastest, the strongest, the best. And with his natural talent, he usually was. Anakin had always been motivated to do good but Kenobi belatedly realized the danger of his apprentice's ambition, so easily twisted from good to evil, now the only thing left driving the creature that his former student became.

The couple and their families took their places up front before the magistrate. The trio played a slow march with a simple tune. Someone rang a bell tone to call any stragglers. Only the families and immediate friends had seating on benches and chairs borrowed from the public buildings. Everyone else stood behind them. Kenobi stayed in his bit of vanishing shade by the building wall with a few other observers. It was mid-morning. The ritual would be short and the following celebration over before the suns and the heat climbed too high.

"We . . . have come to witness . . . ," the magistrate began.

Kenobi's brow wrinkled. There was something missing. He had seen ceremonies like this before.

" . . . with the blessings of their families, in the safety and security of the Empire . . ." A collective grumble of disapproval murmured through the crowd.

 _'Free farmers.'_

That was the missing part. The ceremonies that Kenobi had heard before started with, "We the free farmers . . . "

And the Empire had never been singled out for praise before, though they had added the Tatooine system years ago to its territory, the Hutts who ruled the planet offering no resistance. The settlers ignored the Imperials as much as possible out in the Jundland Wastes.

" . . . the benevolence of our emperor, Emperor Palpatine . . . "

The Empire was not ignoring them. An old dread sank into him.

Palpatine.

As a member of the Jedi Council, Kenobi had sat with him in many meetings with the former-Chancellor, now Emperor. Over the years, he had gradually come to deeply distrust the wily old politician, but he had never thought - - nor had anyone else on the Council - - imagined that he was a Sith Lord, Darth Sidious. The Sith Lord that they had been seeking for years since Obi-Wan's Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, was killed by the Sith apprentice, Darth Maul.

 _How could vision have been so clouded that they did not know? For so long?_

After years of war that decimated the Jedi Order and supported by a popular wave that yearned for the peace and security he promised, Palpatine swept away the both the Republic and the Jedi, transforming it into the Galactic Empire, the unthinkable made real. But even after all this time, Sidious's position as absolute head of state never seemed real to Kenobi. An undigested lump of horror that never went down. A nightmare that should never have happened but could not be denied.

 _How could the Sith be ruling the galaxy now? How could that happen?_

In his exile on Tatooine, Kenobi had far too much time to think about it. Strangely, Palpatine did not rule as a Sith, Darth Sidious. He was a tyrant, as cruel as any ancient Sith Lord. But no one seemed to know what he truly was. No one. And the very few people who Kenobi encountered who knew of Darth Vader considered him to be only Palpatine's creepy henchman and thought that 'Darth' was a given name, not a Sith title. They ruled the galaxy with lies; conquest was 'liberation'; oppression was 'security'. But the Sith seemed to have vanished from memory even more thoroughly than the Jedi had.

The couple exchanged vows to each other, the magistrate's words droned on to a legally binding conclusion.

" . . . safe in the law, so generously provided by our noble Emperor . . . "

Kenobi's heart sank again at this additional intrusion. The Empire, and especially the Emperor, regularly claimed credit for everything 'good' and now that reach had extended its greedy tentacles out to this dreary, forgettable wasteland. How much worse was it on the populous technologically active worlds close to the core of the Empire? In his long mediations, he feel a depth to the darkness, the slow enveloping corruption that always seemed to be worse whenever he looked in the Force.

He breathed deeply, clearing his mind. The Force was there, all around as it always was. Even with the strength of the Dark Side that shaded the whole galaxy like a sinister cosmic dust cloud.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, but no one in the marriage party noticed. The disturbance, the cold rolled in from the Force. Shapes flowed together in the blue sky, a shadowy storm cloud that swirled into an enormous robed figure overhead, deformed facial features looking up from under the hood, a sinister smile on its lips.

Darth Sidious in his true form. And behind him loomed Vader's black helmet and armored body. The Emperor's muscle man, a Sith apprentice.

Casting a stifling shade over the desert, the image from the Force leered at him, as if Sidious looked right at him, knew where he was from far away Coruscant. The deadness inside Kenobi swelled, an artificial calm that kept away panic but diminished him. A Sith Lord ruled the galaxy, but he, a Jedi Knight, remained in hiding, caught in an endless wait, slowly strangling on the evil, vanishing into the sand.

The Sidious image threw its head back and laughed, mouth wide open. Even its teeth were corrupt. Despair welled up inside Kenobi. _That_ ruled the galaxy. The wrongness of it still woke him at night sometimes. How did it happen? How _could_ it happen?

The laughter slowed, as if even a Dark Lord could be satiated on its own evil. Then the expression changed, yellow eyes darting quickly to either side. It snarled. Vader's red lightsaber blade hissed on.

Nooooo!

Losing his saber, Vader's arms flew out wildly as the Force took him; he dissolved in the sudden blaze.

Aaaaaa-aaaaaaa-aaaahhh-hhhhhhh!

Sidious was blown back, rapidly shrinking, swallowed up, annihilated by a blazing light. The same light glowing from young Luke.

The shadow vision over the desert vanished. Kenobi startled, catching himself from tripping backward.

The crowd broke out into applause. The trio's electronic keyboard played a faster, happy tune. The newly married couple was presented to the community. Kenobi retreated to the side of another building before the gathering broke up and headed for the refreshments.

No vision, no meditation had ever told him how Luke could destroy Vader and the Emperor. He was strong in the Force, but he had no training, he knew nothing of his father or the Jedi or the Sith. Or even the Force.

How?

/ You cannot live young Luke's destiny for him, Obi-Wan. /

 _I could train him. It's not too late._

/ Take him from the only family he knows? Drag him unwilling toward a destiny he has never conceived of? /

The relief he had felt from his old Master's disembodied presence in the Force drained away from his body, water into the sand.

 _How? How can he defeat the Emperor without training?_

/ I do not know. The future is clouded, ever changing. But if you are to train him, he must come to you. /

Yoda was adamant about the same thing. No training would there be, unless come to you, he does.

People formed a line for refreshments. Beru put Luke ahead of her and Owen so he could eat first. He filled his plate, but with a backward glance at the line behind him, seemed to be mindful not to take too much. The family found a corner of a table to eat together. The desert clothes these people wore were comfortable, loose fitting and practical. Kenobi's brown robe was just as unremarkable in Anchorhead as it had been back at the Jedi Temple in the days of the Republic. Luke's white tunic, pants and boots were painfully similar to what Kenobi himself had worn as a Padawan.

/ If you were to train him. What would you teach him? /

 _The ways of the Force. The Jedi arts that you taught me so well, Master._ Kenobi's thoughts pleaded to Qui-Gon Jinn.

/ Was I able to teach you how to defeat the darkness? To see its source? See the Sith in your midst, in war, at the heart of the Republic? /

The sadness he heard in his old Mater's thoughts wilted hope inside him.

 _ **No, Master.**_

Kenobi joined the stragglers for a turn at the remains of the refreshments. There was no point in wasting it. The Lars family did not notice him as they finished their meal. When they finished, they would go back to their farm where Luke Skywalker was being trained to be a moisture farmer.

He dumped his plate of food into a side pouch on his belt. He was not really hungry, but he had learned not to waste any resources.

The wedding party broke up with people forming a corridor for the couple to pass through ending with them hopping into a two seat speeder and waving to friends and family as they zoomed off. The guests headed back to their homes in Anchorhead, or to their own transports back to the surrounding farms.

Going to his minimal speeder-bike, Kenobi watched the Lars family climb into their own speeder. Luke asked to drive; he had been driving speeders for years now; all the children on the farms were taught to be self-sufficient from a very young age. Lars denied his request, but with a smile, a pat on the shoulder and an assurance that he would have many chances later. Kenobi waited until they were out of sight before going his own way. It was impossible to follow them without being seen in the open desert. With the Force, he did not really need to. After years of watching over him, he could sense Luke far across the desert, but he still took advantage of these occasions to see him. He wondered what he was looking for. Hope?

The pale plain of sand and packed dry ground rushed by underneath his speeder, the rocky hills and his isolated hut far ahead of him. Haze dusted the horizon. It swirled and formed into the dark dusty Sidious image. Beyond it, he saw no light, no future, for himself, for the Jedi. There was only darkness.

Luke was his only hope.

The Sidious hood darkened into sharp lines, empty eyes, mechanical breathing. The scarred remains of what had been a young boy from Tatooine, eager to do good. A good that was corrupted from the beginning, by a friendly Chancellor who took a fatherly interest in Obi-Wan Kenobi's Padawan. Understandable at the time, since Anakin helped save the Chancellor's homeworld in the Battle of Naboo. But now the truth was so clear. Palpatine had been grooming Anakin all that time, encouraging his ambition, feeding him lies. Until the young boy, the knight he became, vanished into the fiery pit of evil that had swallowed the galaxy.

He gripped the handles of the speeder tightly.

He felt less alive than he had when he got up for his sickeningly-same morning routine. If a person was the sum of their accomplishments then he was being torn apart, dismantled, dismembered, slowly over the years while everything he had done, achieved as a Jedi Knight, was ripped apart, ruined, destroyed. It was so clear now; Sidious had always wanted far more than to defeat the Jedi. He wanted to annihilate them utterly, until they did not even exist in memory.

The engine whined louder, objecting to the demand for more speed than it was designed to give.

He almost missed the turn going up into the hills. The engines screeched as he headed upward, the back end of the speeder scraping flat rock as it dipped too low. His whole body tensed as he realized that this was the type of reckless action that drove him mad with anxiety whenever Anakin had done it. More danger signs that he had not seen.

His grip on the handlebars tightened.

Some component was smoking by the time he braked, coming to a stop at his hut. Ignoring the abused machine, he stumbled inside.

There was nothing there but the pathetic clutter that he cultivated like a junk garden to survive in the desert. He fell to his knees and stopped himself from collapsing completely to the floor, supporting himself on his hands. He felt sick. He had not eaten since early morning, but he did not think he could hold anything down. He panted there for a long time, and when he finally climbed back to his feet, his head swam. Belatedly, he realized that he at least needed to drink some water. When he was somewhat steady, he went the far wall and half-filled a cup. He instantly felt better after a few swallows, at least physically.

It took longer to calm his mind, to re-learn to breathe. The galaxy was not all dark. The Dark could not exist without the Light. He was just having a very hard time finding it.

A few steps took him back to the living area. His knees would not tolerate a long mediation without the Force, even on the shabby rug. He was getting old; his beard had gone completely white.

/ What have you learned, my Padawan? /

"I do not believe I will survive here long enough to see Luke challenge the Emperor."

/ That is unknown. The future is constantly changing. /

"It is possible that I can still help him after I have died here?"

He felt only empty silence, not even a whisper of a breeze outside.

/ It is unknown. /

"If I am to disappear here, if I am to vanish into the Force, how will I guide Luke? What more training do I need?"

The reply came slowly.

/ Many things, Obi-Wan. But among them, you must be able to see yourself. /

He sighed deeply. Such a simple thing. Something he had thought he learned as a youngling back in the Jedi Temple. And as an eager Padawan, receiving his Master's instruction, when Qui-Gon still lived, so long ago.

"I . . . did not realize that I was not seeing myself clearly."

If he was missing something so elementary, so basic, how much more did he need to learn? How many more sunrises would he have to endure in this wasteland while evil spread unabated across the galaxy?

"Can you help me, my Master?" His throat tightened. The years of learning he had already spent in this lonely hut seemed to vanish into nothing. He had to start over again. And in his present state, he doubted that Qui-Gon could teach him anything. Learning required calm, concentration. And his was vanishing rapidly.

The response was soft, gentle, difficult to hear over the rising storm of his despair.

/ I can show you. If you will see. My Padawan. /

Head falling back, he exhaled, looking for stillness, but finding only the false calm of the growing deadness inside him. He hoped that would do.

The darkness behind his eyelids thickened, neither good nor bad, just opaque. The oppressive pull of gravity lightened and he felt himself separating, detaching from his present self.

 _Well, at least I got this part right._

He banished the extraneous thought before it could pull him out of the mediation.

Soon, the darkness acquired lines, faded pastel colors, stone and sand in the orange hues of sunset. His hut. And light.

Kenobi gasped, falling, diving down from the meditation, tears running down his face. On hands and knees, he suddenly felt alive again, the grinding years of his exile vanishing in a blaze of light.

He had seen light. Light like a Jedi lightsaber. Light radiating from inside his hut. Bright and pure.

The same light that he saw in young Luke Skywalker.

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 **o o END o o**

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 **Disclaimer:** This story first posted on tf.n on 18-Dec-2016 . All characters and the Star Wars universe belong to Disney/Lucasfilm; I am just playing in their sandbox.


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